As a bit of a follow up to my mea culpa regarding the Apple M-series MacBooks and how impressed I am with them, I have taken the plunge and purchased my first new Apple product since the iPhone 7, an iPad Pro with M2 processor. The question: can this serve as a legitimate laptop replacement or, at the very least, a replacement for the majority of daily laptop tasks.
I have only had the new iPad for a few days but here are my first experiences.
Before I proceed, if you’re unfamiliar with me, I am not somebody who just converted to Apple products. I am a long time Mac user going back to the 90’s, an owner of every iPhone from the 3g to the 7 (although when they took away the headphone jack I switched to Android because I don’t much care for phones in the first place but I do love my wired headphones…), and I’ve owned three previous iPads. I work in software engineering and media production so my general daily use cases involve music production, video editing, graphic design for print and the web, and coding software.
The temptation to try to replace my daily driver laptop with an iPad is strong. I have been trying to get there for a while now.
Way back in the ancient times (around 2012) I bought a 14-inch MacBook Pro and an iPad 2(?) to replace my previous iPad 1. I liked the iPad form factor quite a bit and I even started to write some software for the platform but I found that I was not thrilled with a few realities of the situation. Firstly, while I could write software FOR the iPad, I could not write software for the iPad USING the iPad. So, it was more like a phone than a laptop. It couldn’t be used to modify itself in the way a proper computer can. You still needed a Mac. Secondly, the Mac lacked any sort of touchscreen support, so, writing software for the iPad and its touchscreen interface was clunky as hell. You had to run an iPad emulator on the Mac, which sorta worked, but you had no way to really emulate gestures and multi-touch in the emulator. There were plenty of other limitations too, mostly related to file management. If, for example, I wanted to edit a video on an iPad with footage I shot using my DSLR, iCloud was a non-starter as a file sharing technology. Basically, email and web browsing and digital comic books were great on the iPad, but for any serious work, you needed a Mac.
That situation didn’t really change in the ensuing decade. iPads got more capable and back in 2016 I upgraded to a Pro with a Pencil, I added a keyboard case to it, it was a nicer iPad experience, and some really kickass music production apps on the iPad became part of my life, but I still couldn’t use it to code, I still wouldn’t consider it for any sort of serious media production work if for no other reason than the lightning port didn’t really allow it to dock with external devices like large capacity file storage or an external monitor or a high quality A/D converter (or, ideally, all of those things at once). Also, while multi-touch is great, some tasks/apps are more efficient with a keyboard and mouse/trackpad. Finally, laptops were just faster, had more memory, and had more storage. If you have access to an actual computer, why on earth would you limit yourself to the restrictions of a tablet?
But I dreamed of a world where I could have the touch/tablet experience so I experimented with Windows machines. Specifically, I acquired a Lenovo Yoga convertible laptop. Now, Windows 10/11 are not quite as polished as MacOS for traditional computer work and they are miles behind iOS or iPadOs in terms of touch support, but the Yogas are solid machines. As fast, or faster, than the Intel MacBook options of the time, thin and light like a MacBook Air, a little more expandable and upgradeable, and the tablet experience was actually pretty solid, if maybe a tad too big. My Yoga is a 14-inch so it’s a pretty mega tablet when it’s in tablet mode, but it’s been a great machine and I still use it daily. In the 12 years since I bought my last MacBook (a 2012 machine which I still have and use) I have bought TWO Yogas. Both times I considered a Mac purchase and chose the Lenovo and I have no regrets.
But I haven’t been in love.
I used to LOVE my Apple gear. I still LOVE my older Apple products but I don’t have any particular affection for the Yoga experience. It’s just decent. Serviceable. It gets the job done, the form factor is convenient. I wish it ran MacOs. I wish the MacBook Air could flip over and have a touchscreen but this is as close as it seems I can get, it’s just a second-tier operating system experience.
But the Yoga has some serious benefits. It is a full scale computer, it docks with peripherals, it runs all the apps, it’s fast, it’s an all-in-one. If I take a road trip it’s the only thing I need to bring along and I don’t need dongles to use it.
At the end of the day, my laptop that converts to a tablet is sub-par because of software but at least it’s self-contained, a true 2 in 1. On the Apple side of the world I have two very separate devices, each of which has some exclusive capabilities the other lacks, creating a situation where I have to chose one, or the other, or to use two devices where one could have sufficed. I’ve long felt this was a pretty shady product strategy on Apple’s part, an intentional choice to sell more devices, and I’ve long resented that.
Hence the desire to find out if the current M2 powered iPad Pro can finally be a proper 2-in-1 device. Could it replace my ancient MBP for all the things I still use that machine for?
Let’s start with the positives. The iPad Pro M2 is the fastest computer in my house, beating out the laptop I use for work (a MacBook Pro M1) in terms of shear horsepower. It’s wicked fast and uses very little power, just like the M1. It’s orders of magnitude faster than my old Intel-powered MBP. It’s not even close. However, the two machines are really not all that different when it comes to things like web browsing, email, and basic productivity apps. In fact, the M2 experience is almost wasted on standard apps like that. My first gen iPad Pro still has more than enough horsepower to handle all of that stuff with ease. My Intel MacBook too. Hell, I am even running the latest version of macOS on the old Intel machine (via some open source hackery) so I’m really missing nothing where the normal stuff is concerned. If that were all I needed my computer to do, the M2 would be the sprightliest of the three but it wouldn’t be enough to make me want to upgrade to it. In fact, the only reasons I did so now were:
– A CostCo Rewards certificate
– A CostCo sale on iPads
– A failing battery on my 8-year-old iPad Pro
I.E. – it didn’t cost all the much out of pocket and my current tablet was suffering some LI-ION aging. I didn’t buy it because I was suffering from poor performance or lagginess.
I outfitted my M2 with two accessories: a Logitech Combo Touch keyboard/touchpad case and (of course) an Apple Pencil 2. I want to talk about how those two additions do seem to turn the thing into (very nearly) the laptop/tablet 2-in-1 I am hoping for.
The Logitech Combo Touch is what really makes it feel like a laptop. If you’ve ever used a Microsoft Surface, you know the drill. A detachable magnetic keyboard/touchpad, a kickstand to hold the tablet up, not as friendly for actual lap usage as a laptop, but if you use a lap desk it’s not so bad. It really is just fine. I’ve had other keyboard cases for previous iPads but I’ve never had a touchpad before and it changes the game, makes it into an 11-inch laptop for all intents and purposes. The ergonomics and muscle memory are what I’m used to. The keyboard shortcuts I have been using macOS for the last 25 years generally translate to iPadOS, honestly it’s damn close to using a MBP. The keyboard feel on this Combo Touch is pretty impressive. The keys don’t feel mushy, the keyboard doesn’t feel all that cramped. I can legitimately write long form text without wishing I was on a bigger machine. Yes, it’s a bit compact but it’s really quite good.
There are a few annoyances that I’ve noticed. The kickstand approach to keeping the tablet upright is definitely a drawback compared to the fantastic Logitech Create case I have for my older iPad Pro. In the case of the Create, however, the lap stability is created via moving the keyboard forward and magnetically securing the tablet:
Unlike the Combo Touch:
As you can see, the lap depth of the Combo Touch makes it a strictly lap desk/table top situation while the Create could be used on-lap.
This is down to the absence of a hinge, one of the more impressive parts of the Yoga design. 
Of course, I could have gone with an Apple Magic Keyboard case instead which would have addressed this shortcoming because it features a very cool cantilevered hinge design and basically turns the iPad into something even close to a laptop but I didn’t for two reasons:
1) The Magic Keyboard is hella expensive (more than half of what I paid for the iPad itself)
2) The Magic Keyboard is bulkier and heavier than the Combo Touch
3) Did I mention that the thing costs $299???? The fuck, Apple….
Maybe someday I’ll buy a refurb/used/sub-$100 Magic Keyboard but for now, um, no.
OK, so, it’s “laptop like” with the Combo Touch and, if I was willing to shell out some more money for a Magic Keyboard OR if I was willing to eschew the trackpad I could get a bit closer but I have chosen my weapons and here I stand. Let’s talk Pencil.
I’m a huge fan of the Apple Pencil. I may not show my work here on this site, but I draw and paint and when I’m taking notes during meetings at work or designing and planning things, I’m a pencil and paper (or fountain pen and paper) guy. I used to regularly use a Wacom Artpad with my various Mac computers for creative work and I have a stylus for my Yoga and other styli for touchscreens but frankly, nothing compares to the Pencil. It’s really one of the greatest things Apple has ever made. It feels right, it works right, it’s excellent, but there have always been some annoyances that have kept it from being perfect.
Annoyance the first: charging the Pencil is stupid. A magnetic cap (which you could easily lose) covers a lightning connector which charges by either sticking out of the side of your iPad waiting to be snapped off by a nearby dog or connecting to a stupid little dongle (which you could easily lose) that converts the male plug to a female plug and allows you to connect it via a lightning cable. It’s just…. DUMB.
Annoyance the second: the Pencil lacks an eraser. Dumb, I know, but they should have called it the Pen maybe?
Annoyance the third: Storage. The Logitech Create case solved the storage issue by including a little Pencil storage loop, which was nice, but sans a case-provided solution, keeping your Pencil on you was a bit of a problem.
I wish I could say that the Yoga stylus was a better solution or at least equivalent in terms of functionality or annoyances but the less said about it the better. The one I have isn’t rechargeable (it uses one AAAA battery and one tiny little coin cell battery, both of which are usually dead when I go to use the stylus), has no storage option at all, and barely works. A truly pointless accessory and it sucks because one of the truly defining use cases of a tablet is DRAWING. I never, ever, ever, find myself using my Yoga in tablet mode for drawing or note taking. It’s just not worth the hassle.
Finally, let’s talk about drawing tablets, the only solution for a MacBook. I mean…. Hey, when I was in middle school and we had a Koala Pad with a stylus that let us draw lines on the screen of the Apple II I thought that was pretty keen, but being able to draw directly on the screen like it’s natural media is just, DUH. It’s how the mind and body work when using a writing instrument. You don’t draw over on the desk to your right and watch what you draw on the piece of paper to your left when you take out a sketchpad and start sketching.
The Apple Pencil experience on the iPad is the single best drawing/handwriting experience that I have ever had with a computing device. I still prefer using a Parker “51” fountain pen and a piece of actual paper for note taking and exploratory writing and song lyrics, but it’s a really wonderful experience and it’s one of the primary reasons I bought my iPad Pro in the first place.
So, this leads me to a minor confession. I don’t have the Apple Pencil 2 yet, I only have my original Apple Pencil BUT I discovered that there was a little Apple Pencil -> USBC dongle that could be obtained for $9.00 so no problem, I figured I could just use that and I’d be all good to go in Pencil land. Ordered the dongle (unhappily, as described above) and learned almost immediately that it’s no good. The latest and greatest iPad Pro generation is only compatible with the 2nd Gen Pencil. Oh bother. The good news is that Amazon refunded my $9.00 and didn’t even make me return the adapter. So, yay?
I won’t be getting my hands on the Pencil 2 for another day or two but I already know I love the Pencil and I also know that it addresses a couple of the above annoyances. While still not delivering an eraser function on the rounded end, the charging and storage are both neatly addressed by a magnetic wireless charging system that attaches the Pencil to the iPad and keeps it fed with yummy electrons. I think I’ll be using the Pencil a LOT more now that this is the case.
In summary on the positives side:
– The form factor can be made very laptop-ish and generally usable
– The performance is incredible for basic productivity and even for serious computing tasks
– The actual tablet experience is superior to the Windows 2-in-1 equivalent thanks to a superior multi-touch operating system and a stylus that is second to none
Now let’s talk negatives, because they exist and they are some of the same ones that have been there all along.
A mentioned above, the form factor is a big part of the conversation here. A 2-in-1 device needs to be a great tablet and a great laptop. The iPad is the platonic ideal of a tablet and a so-so laptop (without spending a shit ton of money) while the Yoga is an excellent laptop and a so-so tablet with no additional modifications required (or possible). Something of a wash. iPad wins as a tablet, Yoga wins as a laptop.
So it is then down to software and here the problems arise because, I’m sorry to say, that’s still the rub.
If I were a person who could meet all of my software needs via a web browser and an email client (true for many) it would be end of story but I can’t. Hell, for a lot of people the only thing they might add to that list would be games and with an 8-core CPU and a 10-core GPU this thing is probably pretty good for games, I dunno, I haven’t tried it yet. Most of my gaming is accomplished via the Windows gaming PC I built which has a fancy Nvidia card and VR headset and a trillion Steam games. When I want to play on my laptop I just use the Steam Link app and play remote over my home network. Don’t need much processing power for that. I do have a free three month trial of Apple Arcade available with my purchase so maybe I’ll do a gaming test as a follow up but it’s not all that important to me. If I can pair my XBoxOne or my Nimbus Steel controller to the thing and play some games that will be plenty cool and I presume that is something that’s possible. If so, the hardware is likely faster than my Ryzen/Nvidia VR beast. So, again, games would likely not be a major obstacle to laptop replacement for many casual gamers.
But what about my other uses? What about video editing, photography, audio production, graphic design, and (the big one) software development?
Therein lies the rub.
Let’s start with video editing.
Long ago in a galaxy far far away I used to do quite a bit of digital filmmaking. Music videos, short films, I was even considering a feature. I do a lot less of it at the moment (my most recent productions were a few music videos and a short film collection) but it’s something I intend to go back into with a vengeance as I launch the new Nuclear Gopher YouTube channel. To gear up for this I have re-evaluated my choices in video editing software and come down on the side of Davinci Resolve. It’s not completely necessary to know this, but I started my digital filmmaking life using analog capture cards and Adobe Premiere back in the 90’s, moved to DV->Firewire Macs in the early 2000’s with iMovie and then graduated to Final Cut Pro about, oh, 20 years ago. When I got the Yoga I toyed around with Vegas as a video editing platform because it kept coming up on Humble Bundle sales so it was cheap as hell and claimed to be pretty professional grade. I tried, on multiple occasions and with multiple versions of Vegas, to make videos but it was so buggy and flaky that I just couldn’t ever see myself using it for long. I will never subscribe to Adobe and FCP will never be available on Windows so was I ever happy with Davinci Resolve came up on my radar. Holy shit I love Resolve.
Having just completed my first large Resolve video project (“Nuclear Gopher: The Disorganization Behind The Name”, a two-hour short film retrospective that went direct to DVD and VHS for some reason… no streaming) I gotta say I am SOLD. Final Cut is dead to me. So, imagine my happiness to discover that Resolve exists on the iPad! Rock. And. Roll. Final Cut Pro also has an iPad version but Resolve is:
a) Free (FCP for iPad is subscription-ware, blech!)
b) Interoperable with the Win and Mac versions (allegedly)
The iPad version of Resolve is a subset of the full version but a pretty good start from what I can tell so far. I won’t even glance sideways at FCP for iPad unless I hit some sort of wall in Davinci that I can’t see my way clear of.
But, editing the video is not the only thing required sometimes. Sometimes I’m working with old, low-resolution, standard-definition footage and I want to bring it up to modern resolutions without it looking even more like crap than it already does. I have been a regular user of Topaz Video AI for a while now for upscaling old footage. When I was working on NG:TDBTH I was working with digitized 8mm footage, VHS footage, Digital-8 footage, ripped DVD video, and Mini-DV footage. I used Topaz to bring all the footage up to a 1080p HD level prior to importing it into my Resolve timeline. I bring this up because the upscaling process was easily the most processor intensive part of the project and the performance differential between the machines at my disposal was a serious factor. Wanna stress test a computer, do AI upscaling of long video clips.
It went something like this for upscaling the same video clip (rough guideline, I did some bake offs but I didn’t keep track of the numbers):
Elderly Intel MacBook Pro: several hours
Slightly less elderly and more powerful Intel iMac: maybe 30 minutes less than the MBP but still hours
Much newer and more powerful Intel Lenovo Yoga: about twice as fast as the old MBP but still pushing an hour
Gaming PC with fast Ryzen 7 and Nvidia GPU: less than 20 minutes
MacBook Pro M1: less than 10 minutes
This more than anything was the experience that convinced me of the massive performance leap the M1 MacBook had made. It was both a) demonstrably the fastest computer in the house for the same exact task with the same app and b) a power-sipping portable machine rather than a full sized desktop box that has a big ass power brick.
And the thing is… the M2 iPad is even faster, at least on paper.
I don’t doubt for a moment that the iPad could beat the MacBook at the same computing task, even if only be a few seconds but I can’t do the test because the application is available for Windows, and Mac, but not iPadOS. This is true of a lot of professional grade media production applications and it’s easy to see why. To make a version of an application that works on an iPad means you need to factor in limited device storage (mine only has 128GB of storage compared to the 1TB in the laptops and the dozens of TB or storage attached to my desktops), limited RAM (it’s 8GB, from what I understand, compared to 16GB minimum on my other machines), and the need to redesign the UI to optimize it for touch because you could never be sure a user would have a keyboard/trackpad attached. And the market for such software is very small. Professionals don’t try to do things like that with iPads, historically speaking. Could change, sure, but as of now?
So it’s a little frustrating to have this blazing processor in a device that can’t run a piece of software that really needs that kind of power because Apple decided to fork the Mac operating system into iOS and iPadOS instead of aiming for a unified platform and, lest we forget, the iPad is a locked down platform that can ONLY run software from the Apple App Store so there isn’t really any incentive or option to load something of your own on there, is there? The very fact that we call it “side loading” when we put applications or data on our devices using methods other than the Officially Approved Outlets is kinda embarrassing. For decades you bought a computer and installed whatever the hell you wanted on the thing and used whatever files you felt like. Now you buy a computer but it’s called a “device” because you can’t. The iPad can play at being a proper computer but the App Store reality means it’s still a “device”. A separate computer remains necessary for this, and other tasks, at the moment.
But, HD video upscaling is, admittedly, a corner case even for me. If I can do most of my video editing on the iPad, that will be groovy. I haven’t tested it yet but I have no reason to doubt that I can work with a large external monitor, I know I can use a 4TB Thunderbolt drive that I have for storage, and if the back and forth of project between iPad and Mac/Win actually works for Resolve, I will be psyched.
On to music. There are a TON of fantastic iPad-exclusive music apps that I have used for years. I even find the iPad version of Garageband to be preferable to the Mac version for working on casual demos or even recording whole songs. That said, my primary DAW of choice is not Garageband, not Logic, it’s Reaper. Wherever a music project starts, it ends up in Reaper. Reaper, like Resolve, is available in highly compatible Windows and Mac versions, and that factors into my choice of DAW. The Windows PC in my recording studio is connected to a 16 channel audio interface and when I’m recording something with a lot of tracks (like, I dunno, the cast commentary track for the movie I recently tracked with five other people or a drum kit with eight microphones on it) that’s a nice rig. When I want to take the session to the kitchen and headphones for editing, I can put it on my Yoga or my MacBook depending on my mood. I checked if there was an iPad version of Reaper and the answer is, no. No there is not.
I’ve used the iPad as a Reaper remote control for ages, so it’s a nice accessory in the studio when recording oneself (being your own engineer is it’s own art…) but that’s not the same. This is OK though. There are plenty of iPad DAWs available and as long as the tracks can be exported to stems and imported into another DAW, it’s perfectly fine to use a different app for tracking, even the excellent Garageband. The question I still have is whether or not I can use one of my USB audio interfaces with it, however. I have a Mackie Onyx interface that is ideal for recording single sources at high fidelity with near zero latency. I use it on Mac and PC all the time. I have some lightning cable audio interfaces that I could hypothetically use with my older iPad but I haven’t used them a lot. For quick demos on the iPad I have tended to just use the built in mic for scratch vocals or guitars and go back and replace them later with real parts recorded on a proper computer with a real interface. If I can attach a USB-C hub to the iPad and use my Mackie interface or something like it, the iPad could be a serious contender for a mobile recording platform. More trials required.
At this point I feel like I’ve established that I can likely use the iPad for general video editing, with some corner cases that still require a full computer and I have used iPads for demo-grade recording for years and may be able to step that up if the audio interface support pans out. How about photography?
I like old school analog film photography (I have many Nikons…) and I also have a couple of DSLRs and, of course, old and new smartphones that can take great pics and shoot 4K video. Basic photo management is a given and RAW image editing is also nothing I worry about. The options are nearly limitless. I am not clear, however, on scanner support. Can you scan film negatives with an iPad? What about printing?
I’m none too sure and so far I am not seeing a lot to reassure me. It is my understanding that iPadOS just doesn’t have the underpinnings necessary to connect via USB to printers and scanners. Also, I’m going to have to explore a bit to see how I feel about the image editing tools out there on the platform. I’m a wizard with the open-source GIMP, which I have been using for decades in lieu of paying Adobe for the privilege of using Photoshop. I also make heavy use of an image management application (cross-platform, open-source) called Digikam. Neither of these is available (or at least not in a usable version) on the iPadOS operating system. I am anticipating that like in the case of video editing and music production, the iPad will bring something to the table as an adjunct to a computer but won’t be able to completely replace one.
Finally, the big one. Coding. Can you code with an iPad?
The answer in this case is: that depends on what you want to code.
If you want to write iPad software using an iPad you are SOL as far as I can tell. There is something called Swift Playgrounds which appears to allow users to learn coding with Swift and even build iPad apps of a sort but I honestly don’t know if it’s possible to publish said apps to the App Store and if you can’t do that, well, you can’t really do anything except make toys for yourself. XCode is the industrial grade dev tool from Apple and you need a Mac for that. But what if you just want to write HTML, Javascript, and CSS to build websites?
I would argue that anything with a text editor and the ability to render to a web browser would work and an iPad would be just fine for that. A web developer is good to go. If, on the other hand, you want to write Python or Java or Rust or Go or anything compiled… Nope. No can do. No alternate compilers or runtimes are allowed on an iPad. Just no. Stop. Bad Ryan. If that ever happened then the iPad would be a proper computer instead of a device. If you’re some sort of lunatic who likes to code then tough noogies, the iPad cannot be a laptop replacement. Sorry boss.
There are ways around this, sorta. For example, one can use a remote desktop application on an iPad to operate a different computer running MacOS or Windows or Linux and via this remote control can code, but that doesn’t really count. At that point the iPad is just a peripheral, albeit a very smart one. If you want to experience wicked fast build times powered by the shiny M2 processor for your language of choice, too bad so sad, shoulda bought a Mac.
At the end of it all, I will be using this iPad more than the one it replaces. I can do more with it. It’s a better laptop than my old MacBook Pro or my Yoga for most things, it’s frustratingly limited by software for other things. It’s not as good a laptop as the M1 MacBook Pro because that’s a proper computer, not a peripheral, but it’s smaller, lighter, and has touch, so absent a touchable Mac, there will continue to be a class of apps that excel on the iPad that are impossible on the Mac, and vice versa. Therefore, no, the iPad cannot be a full laptop replacement for me. Maybe for somebody else, but not for me. And that’s OK, I guess. It’s an amazing machine for what it is and the software front keeps changing so, who knows? Maybe now that the iPad has an M2 and a USB-C port the peripheral support will happen. Maybe the Magic Keyboard will be so successful that users will clamor for XCode and sandboxed development environments that will let them use iPads for software engineering and Apple will allow it even if it bites into MacBook sales. I dunno. I think Apple could do the ideal 2-in-1 machine and they choose not to precisely because they get to sell two machines to power users like me instead of one. I’ll almost certainly wind up buying an M-powered laptop to go with the M-powered iPad someday when I need to upgrade something. I’ll use the iPad every day, no doubt, but full laptop replacement with the iPad remains a wish, even as it gets tantalizingly closer to being a reality.